About Chef SangTae
Chef Sangtae Park has been cooking all his life. At a young age, he devoted himself to Japanese cuisine in his native coastal hometown of Busan, South Korea. Moving to the US Chicago area 17 years ago, Chef Sangtae worked and help open Mirai and Japonais restaurants as sous chef before finally opening up neighborhood restaurant Badaya in Highland Park for 6 years and then Izakaya Yume in Niles for 7 years, which focused on serving casual, approachable Japanese cuisine.
At Izakaya Yume, Chef Sangtae enjoyed getting his customers to try new things not on the menu and with their curiosity peaked, and trust earned, Sangtae would eventually begin to regularly offer his customers a unique “chef’s choice” dining experience, focusing of Edomai style sushi. Over the years as Izakaya Yume grew with the community, many regular diners would leave dinner "up to the chef", the meaning of Omakase.
Encouraged by the response from his customers, Chef Sangtae has chosen to open a sushi focused omakase restaurant in the west loop of Chicago, called Omakase Yume.
The Restaurant
In a city where cutting edge molecular gastronomy has been at the forefront of the city’s food scene, Chef Sangtae is looking to introduce the city a sushi focused dining experience, respecting the traditional cuisine and philosophy, with some of his own flavor combinations of his Korean heritage along the way.
A classic, seemingly simple food, sushi requires masterful skill in details tasted, but not always apparent to the diner. From the quality, temperature, taste and formation of the rice (shari), to the slicing and seasoning of the fish (neta), every component is critical in defining an elegant taste. Over the years, Chef Sangtae has honed his craft to his own style, yet still keeps the foundation and respect to the original cuisine.
It has always been Chef Sangtae’s dream (yume) to be able to make diners happy through his food and he hopes that every guest he personally serves at the sushi bar at Omakase Yume will bring a memorable, delicious and enjoyable experience.